Children’s interests
We plan around your child’s interests. Here is our interest board where we write any interests that we could use in the classroom.
For example, some children are interested in Power Rangers and this week we’ll be trying to free the Power Rangers that are caught in elastic bands.
Please write on the bubble if your child has any interests that we could use to plan for an exciting classroom environment. We’ll also be encouraging children to add to this board, too – please feel free to add to it any time!
Has your child been learning their words on their word rocket? To make it more fun you could play ‘Splat’. Using a fly splatter, hit the word as you say it. The children have really enjoyed playing this at school!
Harvest: 13 October 2017
Thank you for the generous donations. The Salvation Army collected the tins and packets for their food bank.
Highlights this week
We enjoyed learning about mindfulness this week and learnt new breathing techniques to help us approach difficult situations in a calm manner.
We’ve been working on our rapid recall of number facts, using dominoes to help. Please practise these at home, too.
Well done to our Golden Star this week. I think she feels proud!
Home Link – Shapes
Can you make a picture using different shapes?
You could make a house, vehicle, pattern… Be as creative as you like!
Remember to talk about the names of the shapes you use.
For this week’s activity, please write any vocabulary your child uses as they make their picture. For example: ‘It’s a circle, like a wheel’ or ‘The house has a triangle for a roof’. This important feedback from home link activities helps to inform our assessments and plan the next steps in the children’s learning.
You could always email us a photograph and any comments to our Foundation One email: scholesf1@spherefederation.org
Whoosh!
We had great fun making delicious currant buns, carefully weighing the ingredients and stirring the mixture together. The smell was amazing! They were, of course, decorated with a cherry on the top! The children really enjoyed extending their play into the ‘playdough’ baker’s shop and even into the maths area where they used the balance scales to weigh different ingredients. Last Wednesday, we had a wonderful ‘wellie walk’ around the school field. We collected a huge bag of leaves, sticks and feathers which we enjoyed sorting by shape, size and colour. Some children were sure we would find fairies in the big tree trunks! No luck this time but maybe we need to think about how to attract them into the nursery area… watch this space!
What are we learning this week?
We’ll be extending our play and learning about 2D shapes by going on a shape hunt and using shapes in our creative areas. The children have absolutely loved using props as they sang the currant buns song; this week we shall be using the rhyme ‘5 little speckled frogs’ to develop number and language skills.
The frog theme also links in nicely as we begin to prepare for all things magical at the end of October. Watch out for magic potions, spiders and spells in the water area!
We shall be reading ‘Room on a broom’ by Julia Donaldson in our key person groups. We will use the story as a stimulus for small world play using props to retell the story. There are some fun activities available to download on the Room on the Broom website, including a memory game for you to play. You could also watch the story on line if you don’t have a copy at home.
Autumn walk
Nursery children enjoyed listening to the ‘We’re going on a leaf hunt‘ story before we went on our own hunt around the school grounds. We thought about the things that we might find and took a big bag with us.
It was very muddy so we wore our wellies to walk through the squishy mud. Squelch, squerch, squelch, squerch! We found colourful autumn leaves of all different shapes and sizes, twisted ivy around tree trunks and we spotted a squirrel gathering some acorns. We even found some mushrooms that we knew not to touch!
Afterwards, we took our autumn treasure back to nursery and sorted it using our senses.
Year 6 Bikeability success!
Congratulations to all the year 6 pupils who took part in the Bikeability training over the past two weeks!
Road safety skills can be difficult to master! We’re all really proud of how you represented our school and conducted yourselves. You worked hard, persevered and had a great attitude (even in the pouring rain!).
PE
The children have enjoyed PE in the hall. Over the past couple of weeks we have experimented with different ways of moving – hoping, skipping, jumping and slithering along the floor.
Next week, the children will get changed for PE. Please can you make sure your child has their PE kit (white t-shirt and blue shorts) in school on Monday 16 October.
After half-term, we’ll have a gymnastics coach on a Tuesday afternoon. This will be for Rainbow and Sunshine children.
We will send PE kits home to be washed at the end of each half-term.
Baking, bear hunting and building apple runs.
Welcome
We’d like to begin by welcoming Mr Gledhill to our Foundation One team. He has already been joining us during the day and has been busy getting to know the children. Mr Gledhill is going to be covering Miss Logan’s maternity leave and whilst she isn’t leaving just yet, she will soon be moving to Key Stage One for the remainder of her time at school. Miss Logan and Mr Gledhill have been working together during group times as he will become the Key Person for green group.
What are we learning this week?
The children have continued to enjoy singing ‘Five currant buns in a baker’s shop’, so much so, that we’ve decided to make a bakery role play area. This will provide lots of opportunities for children to communicate with each other, write receipts and count pennies to pay for their currant buns. You may even notice a lovely aroma in the rainbow room next week… Can you guess what we’re going to bake?
Autumn is really upon us now; we’re always talking about the changes that children can see in our nursery garden. On Wednesday, we’ll be ‘going on a leaf hunt’ to search for more signs of autumn in our school grounds. Don’t forget to send wellies (named) and a waterproof coat!
Many children have shown an interest in rolling things recently, from balls to trucks and apples. As a result, we’ve introduced some ramps to our vehicle area and we’ve used apples that have fallen from our tree to create apple runs using the guttering and stands. We’ll also be rolling conkers next week to create some autumn art work. Look out for it in our art area soon!
Home Link
Thank you to everyone who enjoyed completing the Home Link activity last week – we can see a few stars starting to appear on children’s handprints but we’d love to see some more! This week’s activity, is to read one of our favourite stories, ‘We’re going on a Bear Hunt’. We have a small world area linked to this story in our outdoor area and children are enjoying re-telling the story using the props. Swishy swashy… Squelch, squerch… Hooo wooo…
If you don’t have a copy of the story, you could visit the library or watch Michael Rosen telling the story online- it’s great! www.jointhebearhunt.com
Interests
Hopefully, you will have noticed our current interest notice board as you come into nursery each morning. We’ve added some of the things that we have noticed that the children are interested in and we’d really love to find out more about what your child loves at home at the moment. Please take a post-it note from the board and tell us – don’t be shy! It’s there for all parents/carers to use and allows us to continue making learning fun and relevant to children.
Alternatively, you could e-mail us: scholesf1@spherefederation.org
Reminders
- Please ensure to collect your child on time from nursery. We finish at 3.00 on Mondays and 3.15 Tuesday to Friday. We always have a member of staff on the door 15 minutes before this time in order to allow a calm end to the day and to enable us to speak to you.
- Remember to check your child’s folder for accident letters, changing notes and other information each day.
Working together
Thank you to those who came to the parental partnership evening. We hope you found the evening informative and have lots of ideas on how to be involved in your child’s learning journey at school.
We value the importance of working together with you to gain a holistic view of your child’s learning. You can share your child’s learning moments with us by email (scholesf2@spherefederation.org), wow documents and time to talk sheets.